cArt37

artist statement:

Exploring the vacant spaces in an abandoned textile mill, I discovered an abandoned cart---tattooed with the number 37. While making a photographic study of this object, the cart became my “model” with features and characteristics that revealed themselves in various light and locations.

In these conditions, I was confronted with a realization: each tear, each cut, each mark in the canvas of this cart represented an event. I began to wonder what was the incident that inflicted this trauma. Was it an accident, carelessness or a deliberate act of aggression? Did it go unnoticed or was it met with reprisals? Who were the workers that pushed this vehicle and its loads day after day throughout the factory supporting the efforts of WW2?

As I moved through the spaces left behind by time, pushing the cart along with me, these questions made me very aware of what was no longer here. Clearly there were untold stories that can never be recounted. Questions that will always remain. Consequently, the images in this collection make us give pause and reflect upon our own transitory nature. All that remains is artifacts like the cart and echoes of footsteps and voices.

Too, just as the wheels of this vehicle carried it back and forth throughout the building, we are reminded of the ebb + flow of industry, commerce + capitalism. “Wheels within wheels in a spiral array, our causes can’t see their effects”---wrote Neil Peart. The effect? That innovation proceeds growth which proceeds irrelevance. This is the vanity that is the nature of endeavor. Despite winning the war, with its empty cart speaks of a greater defeat at the hands of a global marketplace.

Finally, we are reminded by the #37 indelibly inscribed in the skin of the cart, that society too has reduced the individual to mere numbers---account numbers, phone numbers, social security numbers. Digital with personality. And yet, like cArt37, we must be more than that for we carry forward the scars of our own traumas and aspirations.